It claimed recently-funded Triptease was "unlawfully accessing" data to collate the information provided on the widget, and that by showing the data, which it said was "often misleading, inaccurate and misrepresents the prices and availability being for rooms at your hotel on Booking.com", hotels could be in breach of advertising regulations in the European Union and elsewhere around the world.

So that's Triptease, yet it turns out some hotel groups have been working on similar ideas... But, at the same time, do not seem to be particularly comfortable with talking about it.

Take the Montcalm chain in London - a group of six luxury hotels in central London.

Earlier this month (Feb 2), PRNewsire carried a release from the chain to promote the launch of a new "feature", allowing users to compare "Montcalm's prices with those of the best rates available through comparison websites Booking.com, Hotels.com and Expedia".

Curious as to how Montcalm might be considering how to deal with any legal threats from the Booking.com legal team. given Triptease's experience, we tried to get in touch.

The chain didn't respond to our requests for comment, so we asked a PR agency that had repped for it in the past to find out more.

Someone from GribbonBerry eventually replied, six days after our request, to say that the release was "published on PRNewswire without Montcalm's consent and knowledge".

So a rogue "webmaster", according to GribbonBerry, had posted the release but, remarkably, it was still nine days after the original date that the company had realised this terrible mistake and decided to remove it.

Samira Dhahak, group marketing manager, sent us a statement via GribbonBerry to say:

"We have spoken to the concerned person and action has been taken. Main source of the news has been taken down and they will be proceeding with the rest within 24 hours."

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Whilst the tale about the rebellious employee might make marginally humorous fodder for the likes of PR Week, Montcalm still didn't seem particularly keen on answering any questions about the widget itself - despite the widget being live on the website.

Interestingly, Montcalm's original press release contained a helpful picture to illustrate the tool, featuring the three OTAs and their respective rates for one of the chain's properties:

Fast forward a few weeks, once the press release has been taken down, and the widget remains but without Booking.com:

We continued to ask about the widget and also why Booking.com had suddenly been removed from the comparison listings.

GribbonBerry took four more days to reply, but then only to say that it is an external PR agency and Tnooz's questions should be directed to the in-house team (despite previously saying it was forwarding our queries to the chain, and getting a response about the naughty webmaster)... of course, this being the same in-house team that had been ignoring our requests for comment from over two weeks before.